I want to state that all incoming and outgoing mail from Venezuela are amazingly delayed, collectors have been waiting at about 3 or 4 whole months to receive their letters, so these delays are becoming a very serious problem, because it can´t be guaranteed that the letters are going to arrive in a short period of time till the problem with the mail system get solved

What i know from a employee is that the main branch at the capital city (Caracas) is currently out of capacity of handling the huge ammount of incoming and outgoing mail, so the handle the most recent mail and older mail has no priority. There is one more thing and is that the company don´t have efficient ways of transport, they trucks are used in other tasks different from Ipostel and also there are a lot of trucks out of service. There could be more reasons, unknown by me

The problem are not the secondary branches from the cities around Venezuela, they all work fine and efficiently, at least offices from Maracaibo works very well and efficient, as i´ve noticed, the main problem has always been the mail branch at Caracas

Having said all this, on behalf of the community of collectors of Venezuela i´m asking to the whole community of collectors of Colnect please understand this situation that has been developing for several months and when making or receiving a proposal for exchanging know the shipment will take longer than usual and you will have to be patient at the time of receiving the letter and know that any events that may occur after the letter was sent is not the responsibility of the sender but the company where the shipment is made

Jorge has been contributing a lot to Colnect and has been awarded the prestigious 3 stars of contribution award which is given to collectors who have spent hundreds of hours helping Colnect become better for the benefit of the entire collectors community.

We've asked Mr. Villegas a few questions, to learn a little about how he got this far as a collector.

Where do you store all your phone cards?

I have almost an entire room 2 x 2.5 meters, which used to be the study room, but is now my phone cards storage room. It always looks messy.

How did you start collecting?

My entire life, since I was a boy, I have been collecting many items like coins, stamps, calendars, cigarette packs, wine labels, box matches. I really had a lot of stamps and cigarette packs.By the time I was ~20 years old, my mother threw away my collections when cleaning our home (he laughs) and I didn't collect anymore for nearly 20 years.In 1997 I couldn't take it anymore and started my phone card collection, because it was a relatively new item to collect.

What is the main focus of your collection?

First, I started with my own country, Argentina. I later expanded to South America, then Europe and one day decided to go with all the world. I like all phone cards, except the prepaid and refill GSM cards.

How did you first learn about Colnect?

I learned about Colnect when it was still called Islands Phonecards Database, from a friend here in Buenos Aires. In the year 2005 not many catalogs were available on line, and Islands had that terrific feature that allowed automatic matching with other collectors.I remember how the site kept growing week after week. Very exciting!

How many hours a week do you spend on Colnect and on your collection?

I would like to say that I enjoy the hours on Colnect, and don't spend my time. With other things I "spend" time, but on Colnect, it's almost an investment of my time. As for my job I log in to Colnect several times a day. It may seem that I'm always connected, but the reason is that Colnect is my initial page, and I check it in at morning, in the evening and in the night. I guess I invest 3 hours per day on Colnect and my collection.

Why are you contributing to Colnect's phone cards catalog?

I think that the best way to get phone cards is to add missing cards, because when a card appears, it is no longer a ghost but a real card. Then one person marks that he has it, another marks that she wants it. The more people marking the card on Colnect, the easier it becomes to get that card.When a phone card appears only on a seller listing in the market, it may have a high price. But when it becomes listed on Colnect, you can easily see who has this card and it becomes more easily available. More importantly, my contribution and the contribution the many collectors is different than that of sellers because collectors only collect, and are not trying to make a profit.

Which is the most important improvement that you would like to see on Colnect?

It is not easy to ask more from Colnect. Maybe a faster site and more items on the catalog? Perhaps a photos section about a collector's life, methods and goals of collecting, an open market, etc.

Do you have a message to collectors out there?

I would like to thanks Amir, founder of Colnect, for Colnect and the possibilities it brings. Your work is great, and while others just talk, you do things. I would also like to thank the collectors, without whom life will be a little boring :)

Thank you Jorge for this interview and we hope to see your collection grow even bigger with Colnect. Happy collecting :)

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Following our tradition of reporting statistics in interesting numbers, we're happy to announce there are now 22,222 collectors connecting on Colnect. During the last month, Colnect has been visited by more than 150,000 people. If you're one of those collectors visiting Colnect but have not yet chosen to become a member, you're welcome to join us. Colnect is really special in the services it offers collectors.